Thank You Card? No Thank You.

Thank You Card? No Thank You.

There are many of the finer points of wedding planning that baffle me. I’ve had a bit of confusion over the purpose to groomsman/bridesmaid gifts, and have referenced the fact that I don’t particularly understand some of the formalities that weddings seem to breed. Despite all that, I’m largely tolerant enough of most wedding-related items that I get over it after I’ve had my few minutes1Or hours. of griping about not understanding why certain details are needed.

There is one item on the wedding agenda, however, that I don’t get. It’s not just a wedding item either. It’s a wasteful, pointless monstrosity that causes more damage to the environment than global warming, oil spills, and the copious amounts of glitter on prom dresses combined. I am, of course, talking about thank you cards.

Now before the manners police commits what would only be the third most egregious abuse of power by law enforcement in the USA in the last month2I can only assume this is still the case, regardless of when you read this post. YMMV., allow me to make a few points. I’m not against the concept of saying thank you. In fact, I firmly believe that saying please and thank you are so important that a law requiring their usage could become the 28th Amendment, and I would be first in line to sign that document. I’m also not against the greeting card industry as a whole. While I do find greeting cards to be a waste of time in general, there are some people who only keep in touch with their families via greeting cards and other frivolous, antiquated items. Coincidentally, when JoAnn Fabrics comes out with their new slogan “Home of All Your Frivolous, Antiquated Items”, remember you heard it here first.

What I see as unnecessary is not the existence of thank you cards, nor the premise of thanking someone for doing nice things for you. What I find unnecessary about them is one thing and one thing alone.

Why the hell are you wasting paper to tell me the exact same thing you told me twenty times at your actual wedding?3No really…

I get it. You’re grateful that people liked you enough to come to your wedding. Your guests took time out of their relaxing weekends to see you engage in your legally binding* nuptials, some of them potentially travelling great distances in order to do so. Those same people put on their Sunday BestTM clothing, made their way to a church4A building that many won’t enter outside of a wedding., and shared in your joy at your reception. If you’re lucky, women cried at the sight of your love and men showed enough restraint to not sleep with multiple bridesmaids in the same night. It was a beautiful thing that you’ll be talking about for years to come.

And you know what? You should talk about it for some time. It was your fucking wedding. Be happy that you got married. That’s great news. Some people who truly love each other can’t get married because the people who write and judge laws are frivolous, antiquated items5Hopefully this is only the case in the USA until June 2015, however I have very little faith in elderly Supreme Court justices and their ability to be progressive.. Rejoice in your bliss. Thank all of the people you want to during your wedding, in between the wedding and the reception, and at the reception itself. It’s what you should do. But don’t send a thank you card.

You’ve already thanked your guests an average of 17.8 times each by the end of the wedding night. You don’t need to say thank you again. We get it. You appreciate the fact that we didn’t give you chlamydia as your wedding present. There’s no need to thank us for that.

The worst part of it is that nearly every thank you card sounds exactly the same. Sure, the sentences may be in a slightly different order, and yes, there will be a couple of minor adjustments for sake of filling in names/gifts. But every thank you card will sound something like this:

Dearest Han and Leia,

Thank you for coming to our wedding! We were so happy that you were able to share in our happiest day! Derpino and I love the random gift from our registry you purchased for us. We will be sure to put your thoughtful gift to good use. We hope to see you soon and be sure to keep in touch!

Love,

Mr. and Mrs. Jones

Want to write this letter yourself? Here’s the template:

Greet your guests as if they were Edwardian royalty

Thank them for their attendance at the wedding

Remind them you were happy they attended

Express your love for the gift they purchased you. NOTE: You must describe the gift in as terrifyingly ridiculous detail as possible.

Reassure your guest that their gift was the most important one

Express a true (or fake) desire to see your guests again6Bonus points if one member of the newlyweds likes the guest in question, yet the other doesn’t.

Love, The Happy Couple. It’s always love. Even if you haven’t seen your guest for twenty years, it’s love.

Of course, not everyone wants to write a thank you card. If I had my way, thank you cards would be written like this.

Hello Han and Leia,

Thank you for coming to our wedding and giving us a gift.

Regards,

Mr. and Mrs. Jones

How many things are wrong with the thank you note above? If the number you said is higher than zero, you’re wrong. IF there must be a thank you card sent out7Hint: There doesn’t., all the more that’s needed in the card is to thank your guests for coming and (if applicable) for giving you a gift. That’s it. No flowery bullshit about how you want to become closer with your second cousin twice-removed. No meticulous details about how much you loved the real Asian bamboo chopsticks that you won’t actually use after three months of marriage because you know how to use a fork. It’s simple, to the point, and conveys the exact same thing as the previous form letter.

Look, I know you want to express your gratitude for people coming to your wedding. That’s fine. But get to the fucking point in doing so. Either make your thank you cards completely personalized for each person you send one to, or go the complete other direction and send the one sentence card above. Don’t half-ass it and make your thank you card a form letter. Better yet, don’t make one at all.

However, if you must deliver a thank you card barrage on par with the bombing of Guernica upon your unsuspecting wedding guests, do me this one favor. Don’t buy your thank you cards from Hallmark and the like. Don’t buy your thank you cards from the hipster graphic designer who charges way too much for anything that can be remotely construed as whimsy. Don’t buy your thank you cards from anyone in between those levels either. Make them yourselves. And when you do — be sure to make them memorable by using the one font that angers oversensitive graphic designers, IT professionals, and fontifiles everywhere.

Do it for America. Or whatever country you live in. Just do it. It’s the right thing to do. Image credit: obeygiant.com

Author’s note: In this post’s original iteration written in January 2015, the post featured a paragraph that was admittedly fairly sexist how men and women write thank you cards. Sad paragraph was a failed, tasteless attempt at trying to be funny. I apologize.

I’ve chosen to keep the examples of the different ways the cards can be written, as a larger point is being illustrated with the two writing styles. That said, the sexist paragraph and the objectively antiquated gender roles referenced in the paragraph have been edited, once I re-realized when I had written8Edits took place in December 2017, mostly because despite the relatively high traffic it received historically, it’s a topic I talked about once and didn’t care about after that.. Apologies to anyone who might have been offended in reading the original post.

10 thoughts on “Thank You Card? No Thank You.”

I don’t get invited to weddings so what the heck to I know but since I love getting random mail, I would also like to get a thank you card. I can’t even explain why but it sounds nice. Like I said though, I cannot say how I feel about this if I had already gotten 124 thank you cards back. So um, maybe lets talk about this again in 20 years?!

I just find them to be terribly wasteful. It’s one thing if someone wants to go out of their way to give additional thanks to their guests. But the fact that thank you cards are expected — and the hosts of the wedding are looked upon as bad people if they don’t send them — is a depressing sign of where we are as a society.

I don’t get it either. I don’t really get 99% of greeting cards though either. In this age of technology, we’re STILL chopping down trees and squashing bugs so grandma can send me a Happy Halloween card? Ugh. It’s so wasteful and outdated.

Even grandmas find them to be a joke. The fiancee’s grandma lives at a place where people actually donate their greeting cards to a storage facility for crafting. Apparently they had to throw away 7 garbage bags full over Christmas because there were so many.

I think it’s one of those traditions that just became part of the whole wedding thing. There’s a lot of wedding stuff that I don’t get. I was in my friend’s wedding last summer and being a part of the process made me realize just how antiquated a lot of the practices are.

Idk, there are some parts of tradition that I think are nice but thank you cards are indeed wasteful. Wasteful of time and trees and energy. Sadly, I think it’s become such an expectation that it seems rude if someone DOESN’T send a card.

If I ever get married, I think I’m going to go the lazy route and skip a lot of the silly traditions. The only thing I’ll go all out for are the dress and the food for the reception. Because you have to have good eating.

Then ending line to your second paragraph is the exact reason why I wrote this post. From a societal standpoint, it’s preferred that you send a disingenuous thank you card than to not sending one at all. It seems like our priorities and morals are in the wrong place.